PWS(1) Manual Page

NAME

pws - password store management

SYNOPSIS

pws COMMAND [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

The pws tool allows you to store passwords (or anything else, really) in a set of encrypted files. Each file can be encrypted to a different set of users. pws helps you with the bookkeeping of which keys to encrypt each file to and provides a convinient wrapper to edit protected files.

In the intended use the directory with the encrypted passwords would be under SCM control and shared with other people who need access.

initialization

First you need a file where your users and group are defined in. This file is named .users. Lines consist of assignments of the form <username> = <keyfingerprint> and @<groupname> = <username>|@<groupname> [, <username>|@<groupname> …​]

Lines starting with a # are comments and thus get ignored.

% cat .users
# This file needs to be gpg signed by a key whose fingerprint
# is listed in ~/.pws.yaml

formorer   = 6E3966C1E1D15DB973D05B491E45F8CA9DE23B16
weasel     = 25FC1614B8F87B52FF2F99B962AF4031C82E0039
@admins    = formorer, weasel

zobel    = 6B1856428E41EC893D5DBDBB53B1AC6DB11B627B
maxx     = 30DC1D281D7932F55E673ABB28EEB35A3E8DCCC0
@vienna = zobel, maxx

@all = @admins, @vienna

# gpg --clear .users && mv .users.asc .users

The .users file is designed to live in a SCM repository, such as git, alongside all the other encrypted files. In order to prevent unauthorized tampering with the .users file - for tricking somebody to re-encrypt data to the wrong key - the .users file needs to be PGP-clearsigned with a key from a whitelist.

This whitelist lives in ~/.pws.yaml under the trusted_users key and then under the directory name. A sample file looks like:

aliases:
  debian:
    - &tfheen   A28411A596193171331802C0B65A4871CA19D717
    - &weasel   25FC1614B8F87B52FF2F99B962AF4031C82E0039

trusted_users:
  "~/.pws":
   - *tfheen
  "~/debian/dsa-passwords":
   - *tfheen
   - *weasel

adding a new file

% pws ed -n file

editing files

Every file needs a header like:

access: @admins, maxx

You can edit the encrypted file with the pws tool: pws ed file.

updating the keyring

If available as .keyring pws instructs GnuPG to use this keyring in addition to the user’s default keyrings. This allows sharing of the keyring in the repository. Use pws update-keyring to update/initialize this keyring.

AUTHOR

Peter Palfrader <peter@palfrader.org>, Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no>